


The Space Between

by bomberqueen17



Series: Now And At The Hour Of Our Death [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Brain Damage, Cute cat, Dancing, F/M, Memory Loss, Past Brainwashing, Pedicures, Pizza, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, sort of, surveillance footage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-14 23:03:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4583475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Immediate sequel to Ora Pro Nobis: Bucky Barnes eats pizza and gets his toenails painted. Setup to a whole series, but this is just a fluffy bit of front material before the shit starts to get real.<br/>Chapter 2 is a thing I posted on Tumblr a while ago, cleaned up here, sequentially a little later. Chapter 3, then, is a bit I wrote around the same time but never posted.</p>
<p>This is not just my BuckyNat exploration, it's also an exploration of what Bucky would do if he didn't run to Steve, which was the premise of my other 'verse.</p>
<p>"Apparently all it took was 18 straight hours of sleep, a full meal, a hot shower, and two ounces of whiskey to restore Bucky Barnes to his original powers."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Restoration

**Author's Note:**

> I've been holding off on doing any more in this series until I finish up the Stucky/poly epic I've been working on for over a year. But I wrote this so long ago, and I have so little left to do on that epic, that I'm letting myself post the front-matter to this epic, which has a totally different focus.

Natasha was painting her toenails in the living room when a thump and a scuffling noise got her attention. “Liho,” she murmured, “what are you doing?”

Her phone buzzed and she picked it up. It was Steve, responding to her last text, which had been a photograph of James passed the fuck out in her bed with Liho curled up next to his cheek. _So he’s recovering well?_ Steve asked. 

 _Been asleep for_ , she checked the clock and counted it out in her head. _Eighteen hours. I think he woke up once to pee. I checked the bandages last time I was in there and I think he’s healing up well._

She put her phone down and glanced over at the door and startled, narrowly avoiding spilling the bottle of nail polish. “Jesus,” she said, setting the bottle down. 

James was standing in the doorway, looming, wearing nothing but a pair of Hawkeye boxer shorts that she’d had in her stash of assorted clothing-for-other-people. His hair stuck up wildly in every direction, there were pillow creases in his cheek and across his chest, and his face was puffy, his eyes not quite pointing the same direction. 

“‘Mnot Jesus,” he croaked, rubbing his face. “What fuckin’ day is it?”

Natasha carefully put the top back on the nail polish bottle and set it down. “It’s tomorrow,” she said. “I thought you’d wake up soon. I ordered pizza, it should be here in a few minutes.”

He blinked slowly at her, uncomprehending. “Brain’s not working,” he complained, frowning. His eyes had sunk back shut and he swayed, caught himself, and stepped forward, rubbing his face. 

“Come sit down,” she said, holding out a hand to beckon him. He came and sat down on the couch, moving unsteadily; he wasn’t healed yet. Sitting made him flinch; the injury to the back of his hip was probably tender. He probably ought to have the metal arm in a sling, too, she judged, but that was something for another time.

He blinked blearily at her, looking adorable and sleepy and confused. “Didn’t know where I was when I woke up,” he said, and his voice was still ragged with sleep. “But then your cat tried to lick my eyebrows off and I figured out where I had to be. I don’t remember getting here though.”

“The tracker you thought was booby-trapped,” she said. “Do you remember?”

“Mm,” he said, eyebrows drawing together as he considered it. 

“There was a reservoir of some kind of toxin,” Natasha said. “And Sedira got most of it out, but it broke at the last moment, and mostly just got on your skin, but you absorbed a fair bit of it that way before she could get it off. Remember?”

“It burned,” James said softly, plaintively, curling in on himself a little. Natasha retrieved the afghan from the arm of the chair and put it over him, and he wrapped himself in it. “I remember.”

“It should be out of your system by now,” Natasha said. She reached over, put her hand to his forehead, pushing his hair out of the way, and caressed his face. He leaned into her touch, closing his eyes again. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Probably.” He pried his eyes open, thick dark lashes fluttering up. “Feels like I think hangovers used to.”

“It is a very long time since you slept properly,” she said, pushing his hair back. 

“Mm,” he said. “Yeah. I forgot what it was like to sleep in a real bed.”

“I’m rather fond of that mattress,” she said. 

He blinked again, a little more alert, and frowned. “Did I put you out?” he asked. 

“Not at all,” she said. “I slept next to you.” He looked surprised, at that. “Not to worry, you were a perfect gentleman.”

He laughed, and she pulled her hand away, touching her forefinger to the tip of his nose as she pulled back. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad to hear it, I’d hate to have importuned.”

She bit her lower lip, watching his eyes go to her mouth, thinking about what it would be like to kiss him again. He was— he was too perfect. She wanted— she wanted, with an intensity she hadn’t experienced before. Not for a man. She’d wanted things like this before, she’d wanted to _be_ things with this kind of intensity, but she’d never wanted someone like this before, and it was partly terrifying and partly exhilarating and she’d done too good a job so far at not thinking about it. But there he was, too rumpled to be handsome but yanking on all her desires anyway. 

It wasn’t a mothering-instinct, she’d realized as she’d sat worriedly by the bed as he slept— she wanted to nurture him and care for him, yes, but her previous impulses that direction had generally been violent and hands-off. It wasn’t a sexual desire either— although, thinking of the way he’d used his mouth, and his fingers, and his perfect dick, all of that gave her the expected warm internal tinglies— it was worse, it was more thorough. 

Intense feelings for other people, intense positive feelings anyway, tended to confuse her, and this was no exception. But she’d made it this long feeling feelings, real human feelings, for Clint and for Steve and for Nick and hell, even for Maria, and to an extent for Sharon— having real human feelings for James was something she could probably survive.

Though it made her want to simultaneously laugh and scream, and run away until everything stopped. But that wouldn’t do. 

And the doorbell saved her from how awkward the moment had become as she sat there staring into his eyes like some sort of startled wild animal. “Pizza,” she said, “thank God, I’m starving.”

He blinked at her— he’d clearly lost himself in either thought or sleep-fog— as she jumped up. “What do,” he said, then trailed off, clearly confused.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Stay there.”

The pizza delivery person was a girl, maybe twenty, with bright teal hair in cute waves. Natasha paid her in cash. “Hey,” the girl said. “What color is that nail polish?”

Natasha looked down at her freshly-painted toes. She still had the spacers in. “It’s some Sephora thing. No. OPI. I think it’s called I’m Not Really A Waitress, or something.”

“I freakin’ love OPI,” the girl said. 

“The names are cute,” Natasha agreed. 

“The glitter in them is the best of any nail polish ever,” the girl said. Her own nails were plain. “I don’t paint them all that often but I own like, every glitter color they make.”

“I dig the hair,” Natasha said, counting out a nice tip. “Manic Panic?”

“Sure is,” the girl said. “Best part is that it fades so you can keep re-dyeing different gradients.”

“I wish I could,” Natasha said, “but in my line of work,” and she shrugged. 

“You’d look so fabulous with mermaid hair,” the girl said, and Natasha smiled and handed her the tip. “I mean, you look fabulous anyway, but with your eyes, you know?”

“You rock it pretty well,” Natasha said. “Buy yourself some new nail polish and wish luck to the weird lady in 22A when you use it, I could use some luck.”

The girl saluted her with a bright grin, and closed the door behind herself as she left. 

“Her hair was… green,” James said from the doorway, bewilderedly trailing the blanket. God, his— his thighs were beautiful, lean and sturdy and muscled. 

“It’s very popular just now,” Natasha said. “Semi-permanent vegetable dyes. Well, it’s been in style the last ten, fifteen years, really.”

James nodded. “I’ve seen… like, pink, and purple,” he said. He jerked his chin at the door. “I liked the green, though. You should do green.”

She laughed. “Like I could,” she said. “You do green. You actually could.”

“With my skin tone? No,” he said. He came up closer, and touched a lock of her hair, which was a little frizzy where it was escaping from the ponytail. “I feel like your hair used to be a little darker.”

“No,” she said, “it was paler, really. Less bright. I do dye it, generally, but only a little; it is naturally red.”

“I know it’s naturally red,” James said, with a smirk, then hesitated. “Wait. No I don’t.”

She laughed. “Yes,” she said, “when I have any, my pubic hair is pretty red. But you know, that’s kind of— it’s not always a reliable indicator. Pubic hair doesn’t always naturally match the hair on your head.”

“I know,” James said, “but brunettes never have red hair down there. Blondes, sometimes. More often, blondes are dark down there.”

“You’re so experienced,” she said. “A gourmand of pubes.”

“Nah,” James said, “but I had a blond roommate forever. There’s different kinds of blonds, you know? Some tend red, some are dark. He was dark. You’re red.”

That was information she’d never really expected to have about Steve Rogers. “I’m never blonde,” she said. “I’ve never dyed my hair blonde.”

“You’ve worn wigs,” he said. “But I didn’t mean that. Redheads are a shade of blonde.”

“I’m insulted,” she said. “It’s not the same at all.” She went over and opened one of the pizza boxes. “And I can’t believe we’re talking about something like this instead of eating.”

James nearly teleported across the room to stand next to the box, sniffing deeply. “That smells fucking amazing,” he said. 

“I figure on a pie and a half for you,” Natasha said, “and half a pie for me, and maybe that’ll be enough to hold you until tomorrow.”

“I didn’t,” James said, “I don’t— I guess I’m hungry?”

“Eat,” she said, “and you’ll know.”

 

Worryingly, his stomach seemed pretty shrunken. He ate two pieces of pizza rapidly, like he was starving— which he surely was— but then had to stop and sit a little while, slowly drinking a glass of water and looking uncomfortable. 

Natasha took his right wrist gently in her fingers, looking at his battered arm with its crude homemade tattoos. Steve’s name had faded to a translucent white scar. And next to it, in what looked like blue ballpoint ink, was a sequence of Cyrillic letters that she realized was a simple transliteration of her own phone number into the alphabet, with an extra letter before and after— her initials. The most basic kind of code, but it would deter the casual interpreter looking for seven digits and a name. 

She traced it with one finger. He looked down and laughed, a little rueful. “Do you still forget that much?” she asked.

“It’s been better,” he said. “I think it’s-- the actual brain damage is mostly healing but…. not ever sleeping, you know?”

“Maybe we can let this all heal,” she said, running her fingers over the embossed scar of Steve’s name. 

“Yeah,” James said. “Hope so.” He looked at the pizza with identifiable longing. 

“We’ve got to get you back into shape,” Natasha said. She stood and went to her linen closet. “Meanwhile, why don’t you hit the shower?”

James looked up at her blankly, and at first she thought he hadn’t understood her, but then his expression cleared a little and she realized he was having a moment. “You have hot water, don’t you,” he said, in the blank-cautious manner of someone who was trying not to get unreasonably excited. 

“I do,” she said, “as much of it as you want.”

“I’ve been relying on spongebaths in public restrooms,” he said, “and one homeless shelter that never has any hot water but that means nobody showers there so nobody sees my arm.”

“I have fluffy towels,” she said. “A heated towel rack. Nice shampoo, a good conditioner, a decent hairbrush, and about 45 good solid minutes of very hot water.” She dropped a pair of fluffy towels-- a bath sheet, the kind you could wrap yourself in like a blanket, and one of the ludicrously-fluffy towels she used to wrap her hair-- into his lap, and the scent of lavender fabric softener puffed up invitingly. 

He looked at the towels, then back up at her, and she had a moment to think that this was probably where the expression “starry-eyed” came from, this look here. “Really,” he breathed. 

“Yes,” she said with a laugh, “really. Or, if you want, I could draw you a bath and you could sit in it for as long as you wanted.”

“A bath,” he said. 

“I have a big tub,” she said. “Well, huge for me. I bet you could get all the way in it too. And I have some really nice bath salts.” 

“Wow,” he said. He blinked up at her. “I think I’ll stick to the shower. I’m still hungry, I’ll come back and eat while it’s still sort of warm. But maybe later, if you’re offering, with the bath salts.”

 

He came out of the shower tousled and pink and adorable, and Natasha found him sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt that was enormous on her but fit him beautifully, outlining his bulky shoulders and flat belly. He came out and ate two more slices of pizza and drank a mug of whiskey-laced hot cocoa while she put the topcoat on her toenails. 

“I used to let my sisters paint my toenails,” he said. 

“Really,” Natasha said.

“Oh yeah,” he said. She gestured, waving at him to put his feet up on the couch next to her, and he laughed. “Sure,” he said. 

“I have other colors,” she said, retrieving her little basket of nail colors. She’d been using a deep burgundy-magenta red, herself, but she fished through the basket. “Green, teal with glitter, white, nude, royal blue, candy red—“

“Do the same one you have,” he said. “I wanna match you.”

She laughed. “All right,” she said, and took one of his feet into her lap. His toes were still a little pruney from the shower, the nails freshly-trimmed. He’d shaved, too. It made him look younger. 

“So one time I was on a date,” James said, settling comfortably with his fingers wrapped around his mug. “Most of the girls I dated were pretty nice, generally just out to have some fun, go dancing, see the sights, you know. But I dated a couple of girls who weren’t so nice. And this one girl, well. She wasn’t interested in dancin’, really. Didn’t care about no sights. All she wanted was a very particular kind of good time.”

“I assume this was before the war,” Natasha said. 

James laughed, a little bitterly. “Yeah,” he said, “I think the last date I went on was in 1941. I haven’t exactly… gotten out much since then.” He shook his head. “Anyway, this girl, couple years before that. She takes me back to her room and, you know.” He wiggled his metal fingers in a vague gesture. “We engage in some activities that were, you know. Not dancing. And everything’s going fine, and we have ourselves a great old time.”

“I’m scandalized,” Natasha said. “James, weren’t you saving yourself for marriage? I thought you were Catholic.”

“I was twenty,” he said, “and I was really good at figuring out how to phrase things in Confession. I was a good boy, Nat, but I wasn’t a saint. So anyway. Aren’t we in the middle of some pretty complicated stuff when suddenly she catches sight of my toes, and she’s like, wait, are you some kinda fairy?”

Natasha laughed in pure delight. “Some kinda fairy,” she echoed. 

“Right?” James gestured with the mug. “I was like, woman, I’ve had my face between your thighs for like an hour, if I wasn’t interested in women I’d’ve said something by now, believe me.”

“Some of my best friends are fairies,” Natasha said mildly. He was a very old man, after all, and might have some catching up to do.

“Mine too,” James said, a little indignant, then dimmed a little. “Well. Were. Most of ‘em gotta be dead by now. I knew a lotta, you know, interesting sorts of people. And I ain’t sayin’ I never had nothin’ to do with inverts. But that wasn’t none of her goddamn business, and a man’s actions oughta have a lot more bearing on your judgement of him than his goddamn toenails.”

Apparently all it took was 18 straight hours of sleep, a full meal, a hot shower, and two ounces of whiskey to restore Bucky Barnes to his original powers. “You’re absolutely right,” she said, “it was none of her goddamn business.”

“Damn right.” His voice faded, sounding faintly wondering. “I used to tell that story all the time. I had forgotten it.”

“It’s a good story,” Natasha said. 

He glanced over at her. “Steve loved that one,” he said, and he looked suddenly, desperately sad.

“I told him you were okay,” Natasha said. “He was glad.”

“I can’t face him,” James said, hands twisting together in his lap, eyes turned down. 

“Heal up,” Natasha said. “We’ve got time. It’s all right.”

 

 


	2. Pocket Full Of Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Security camera footage suggests the Winter Soldier has skills beyond the expected.

 

“I’ll handle the distraction,” James said. “You get in and get the data.”

“You sure?” Natasha asked. 

“A little spider can go tiny places,” James said in Russian. She turned to glance at him, but he was looking at the screen. Someone had said that to her before. It couldn’t have been him but she couldn’t remember who it would have been. 

“A little spider,” she said quietly, savoring the feel of the words on her tongue. Someone had called her that. “My little spider.”

At that, his eyelids flickered and he looked away. “Yeah,” he said, and it was clear he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. Instead, looking fixedly at the floor, he said, “My little spider,” very softly. 

 

Natasha had expected that James’s idea of distraction would involve a lot of things blowing up. She watched him fit something into his ears, figuring it was earplugs, and prepared herself for a whole lot of noise. It wasn’t until she was well inside the compound that she realized that it definitely hadn’t been earplugs. Earplugs didn’t have wires. No, he’d put in headphones, the earbud kind. 

Why would he do that?

She crawled through the ventilation system until she reached the control room. It had four guards in it; three of them were playing cards, one was watching the monitors and looked really bored. He was also playing something on his phone, but it wasn’t quite absorbing enough; he was actually doing a pretty good job of keeping his eyes on the monitors. 

She hit her earpiece three times, indicating by the clicks that she was in position. James clicked back three times, an acknowledgement. Then he spoke, low and barely audible. “Can you see the security feeds?”

She clicked back three times for yes, wondering what he could be thinking, and wriggled a little closer in to get a better angle over the guard’s shoulder. 

“Let me know how this goes over,” he said. 

She saw him before the guard did. He was right in front of the service entrance, a dark figure striding purposefully onto the loading dock, centering himself between two cameras and looking into them in turn. He was wearing his overcoat, swathed in its dark bulk, anonymous, but he still looked menacing and big. 

The wire from his headphones was visible. He stood still a moment, and Natasha waited for the explosion, but none came. Instead he… started… moving?

By the time the guard noticed him it had become clear that James was dancing. He was one hundred percent definitely dancing. The guard’s head snapped to the monitors that showed him and he said, “Who the hell is that?”

One of the card players glanced up. “Huh?”

Natasha recognized the dance. Holy shit, James was doing the “Single Ladies” dance. Like, straight from the video. Hair tosses and all. “You’re insane,” she hissed into the radio. 

“They see me?” James asked, breathlessly laughing. 

“Yes,” she said. The other players had all stood up and come to look at the monitor. 

“What a goddamn clown,” one of the card players said, laughing. “Is that the Single Ladies dance?”

Now was the time for Natasha to move, but she paused a moment. And sure enough, James threw up his left hand, and it glittered as it caught the light. 

“That’s not Ford,” another of the card players said. “What’s-- what’s on his hand?”

On the next downsweep of his arms, James shed his overcoat and stepped away from it, continuing the dance flawlessly. Natasha had known he was a competent dancer, but she’d never seen him work it with such convincing sincerity. 

He threw his hand up again, and the arm caught the light along its whole, bared length. Oh-- he’d worn the flashy tac gear with the one cut-out arm. She hadn’t realized he’d still had it. Well, distraction. 

“Jesus fuck,” the guy who’d been watching the monitors said, recoiling so violently his chair clattered sideways to the ground. 

“What?” the others asked, milling around in confusion. 

“Who do we know who has a _metal fucking arm_ ,” the guard said, “fucking _Christ_ , we’re _fucked_ ,” and Natasha smirked and clicked her headset. 

“Nice,” she said. “They’re all panicking.”

“Good,” James said, and flipped his hair exuberantly. 

 

 

Natasha stole the security camera footage while she was stealing the rest of their information, and while James was passed-out with a purring Liho on his face, she edited it together, dubbed the song onto it, and leaked it anonymously onto the Internet, tagged it CONFIRMED WINTER SOLDIER SIGHTING, and sent the link to Steve’s phone with the note “one hundred percent genuine.” 

Steve wrote back about an hour later, by which time James was awake and shaved and putting dishes away. “Boy always could move,” he wrote. 

Natasha surreptitiously recorded a video of James, who was banging around in the kitchen making an obscene amount of corned beef hash and singing to Liho, who was riding on his shoulder. He was wearing only a ratty pair of cutoff sweatpants that said PINK across the ass. 

“Oh, lucky, lucky me,” James sang to Liho, “I can live in luxury, ‘cuz I’ve got a pocket full of dreams.” He spun and pretended to dip the cat, steadying her with his metal hand, and she squeaked; as he straightened back up, she mushed her face against him exuberantly. Turned out Liho loved it when James messed with her. Natasha never teased her like that. “You’re a hell of a dancer, doll,” he said, cradling Liho in his arms with her paws in the air like a human baby.

Liho purred, loud enough that the phone camera probably picked it up. 

Natasha sent the video to Steve, who didn’t reply. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually worried there's a lot less interest in a Winter Widow story than in a Stucky one, so prove me wrong? I really really want to explore Natasha as a character.


	3. Catatonic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes he expects to be put back in cryo.

James was having one of his bad days. She’d found him in the bathtub, vacant-eyed and cold to the touch with blood leaking slowly from his nose-- he would slow his breathing, his heart rate, his body temperature, and would be unresponsive, nearly catatonic. She sat with him, holding his cold flesh-and-blood hand, for a while, but she’d learned she couldn’t really bring him out of it. He would snap out of it on his own eventually, and she didn’t like to think about what would happen if he didn’t. 

She didn’t know where he’d been. She’d left him in the tub where she’d found him-- his clothes grimy, blood on his face, skinned knuckles, she didn’t know where he’d been-- and had made coffee. Eventually he’d come out of the bathroom, silent and pale and blank-faced, eyes subtly unfocused. She’d herded him gently to the couch, wrapped him in the electric blanket, and put a mug of hot coffee between his hands, having to curl his fingers around the mug. 

It was a marker of progress when he connected his mind and body enough to lift the mug to his mouth and drink. His eyes were still blank, but when she said, “James,” he turned his head slightly. 

“Could you eat?” she asked. For good measure, she repeated it in Russian.

He didn’t react, but she could tell he was considering it. There was something behind his eyes now; he was conscious. Finally he shook his head. No. Not a good answer, but it was good that it was an answer at least.

“Could you drink?” she asked, in English and then, again, in Russian. You could pack a lot of nutrition into a liquid, nowadays. She had a lot of powdered mixes she kept on hand. He needed calories a lot more often than he was able to eat.

He was blank for a long moment, as though her voice had to travel a great distance. Eventually he nodded. 

“Warm or cold?” she asked. 

He responded a little faster; his eyes flicked down to the mug of coffee, which had probably grown pretty cold, then back in her direction-- but no eye contact, he almost never made eye contact like this. “Warm,” he said in Russian, and his voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper, but it was a voice. A verbal response. They were past the crisis point.

She made hot chocolate with protein powder and whole milk, and took the cold coffee mug from him, replacing it with the hot mug. He curled his own fingers around it and looked at her, not managing eye contact but seeing her, certainly. Almost an interaction. 

He drank slowly, watching her without looking directly at her. “James,” she said quietly, at last, “do you know where you are?”

His shoulders hunched in slightly. “No,” he admitted finally, very quiet. 

“You’re not expected to know,” she said. “That information hasn’t been given to you. Do you have a mission report?”

He considered that, still hunched; he was afraid of giving the wrong answer, and she knew that fear intimately, down in the deepest recesses of her reflexes. “No,” he said uncertainly. 

“You are not expected to,” she said again. She was careful not to show any emotion, not to speak with too much warmth or kindness, because those had always been traps. “You have done well but your programming suffered a fault. I ask you these questions only to determine how deep the fault goes. You have done nothing wrong, James.” 

He was aware enough now to notice that she was calling him by a name, and his eyelids flickered, taking that in, and then his eyes moved slightly, giving her a surreptitious sidelong once-over as a tiny furrow appeared between his eyebrows. “I don’t remember,” he said. 

“Can you tell me the date?” she asked. 

“No,” he said immediately, and she knew he’d been thinking about that already.

That was the thing nobody else really understood: he looked blank, but he wasn’t. She had seen him in this state more times than she could strictly, consciously remember, and she’d always noticed that he made connections in that shattered, but not empty, internal space a lot faster than anyone else noticed. Almost the first thing he remembered, every time, was caution; he knew deep in his bones not to trust his handlers, not to let on what he understood, not to tip his hand, and to wait and guess what they wanted before giving it to them.

She noticed, because she was the same. Even in the most disoriented state, she always knew not to tip her hand.

“Do you know my name?” she asked, more delicately. 

The furrow between his brows deepened, and he looked away as he thought. She was sure he either knew or didn’t, and his hesitation was trying to decide if she’d hurt him for his answer. 

“Either answer is acceptable,” she said. “I just need the truth to determine the extent of the damage.”

He considered that, and she knew there was no way she could genuinely reassure him that it wasn’t a test. He was trying to decide if having more or less memory would get him unpleasantly recalibrated, she knew that bone-deep, and she knew nothing she could say would do anything to ease his apprehension. “No,” he said finally, but she had a suspicion he was lying, from the shift of his eyes. 

“Natalia,” she said. “I’m Natalia.” 

“Natalia,” he echoed, in a whisper. 

“You also call me Natasha sometimes,” she said. 

“Natasha,” he said. 

“I’m not your handler,” she said. “I know I seem like I am, but I’m not. And you haven’t been wiped. There was just a glitch. We don’t know what caused it, but you’re not in trouble and you haven’t failed.”

He gave her another sidelong glance, considering her. Again, no eye contact. He was uncertain and hesitant, but seemed less afraid. He remembered her name, then, or he’d have been more frightened. 

“I was outside?” he said, but his voice wavered up at the end and made it a question. He finished the contents of the mug and set it down. He looked a lot more human and less frozen. Some color had come back to his lips; his metabolism was kicking back up, recovering from the odd suppression he’d had it under in the bathtub. She wondered whether they’d taught him to do that to prepare for cryostasis. She could control her heartbeat, to an extent, but not so much that she could put herself into a trance like that. But her scans of him had revealed a lot of machinery, a lot of cybernetic technology implanted into his body, and so he might actually have computer-aided control over some of those bodily functions. She really needed to get him examined by someone who would know what all of that was, but Stark was the best candidate and the worst candidate all in one, and she’d rather not kick that beehive yet. 

An inquisitive mrrup was the only warning Natasha had before Liho jumped up onto James’s lap. He blinked in shock, yanking his hand back away from the mug, and stared down at the cat, who purred, rubbed her face along his chest, and turned around three times before sitting down on his lap and letting her eyes sink mostly shut. She cranked up the purr volume to a ridiculously loud rumble and flexed her claws happily. 

“Well,” Natasha said, after a moment of stunned silence on James’s part and frozen indecision on her part. He wouldn’t hurt the cat, surely-- would he? “Clearly, the cat has decided you’re fine.”

“Cat,” he echoed, blinking a few times and looking down at her. Very tentatively, he raised his hand to stroke her. She leaned into his touch, blissful. 

“Liho,” Natasha said. “You know Liho.”

“I do,” he said slowly. He closed his eyes and scritched at the side of Liho’s neck, just beside her jaw, and she leaned dramatically into it, purr rising to unbelievable volumes. “Puss-puss,” he said, sounding as if he didn’t quite believe he was saying it. 

“She sleeps by your face,” Natasha said. “You sleep in my bed. Is it coming back to you?”

James stared down at the cat, closed his eyes for a moment, then raised his head and looked at her. “Natasha,” he said. “What-- what just happened to me?”

“You had a glitch,” she said. 

He paused in petting the cat to look at his bloody knuckles. “Did I hurt anybody?” he asked, very quietly. 

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I found you cold in the bathtub.”

He closed his eyes again, shoulders slumping. “I thought,” he said. “I was-- I expected to be frozen.”

Natasha stood up. “Can I touch you?” she asked.

He didn’t look up, but squeezed his eyes shut even tighter. “Please,” he said, almost whispering. She moved over next to him, pulling his head against her torso, wrapping her arms around him.

“You’re all right,” she said. “You’re safe now.”

He shook, and buried his face in her belly while she ran her fingers through his hair. They stayed like that for a long while, until Liho got bored and jumped down, and Natasha let go and made dinner.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't mean to be starting ship wars or nothing, with that last in retrospect kinda passive-aggressive end note-- clearly I'm a huge Stucky fan! I just worry, sometimes; being so eclectic in tastes myself, I feel like I tend to shoot myself in the foot in terms of audience by writing all different things. I suppose worrying about that is counterproductive, though; generally, aiming for an audience never works out. If I were truly trying for great fame and [fandom] riches I should probably not write trailing half-million-word epics, right?


	4. A Loose End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tying up a loose end from AOU: Natasha revisits the ill-advised flirtation with Bruce.

She’d been tracking him on the Internet for a while. At first he was one of many candidates, but after a while they narrowed themselves down. Eventually when that IP address logged into Bruce’s personal Facebook account and liked several posts and pictures, she knew it was him.

When he liked a crosspost from her personal Instagram, she understood that he meant for her to know it was him. Which meant she had to be sure. 

 

Somehow, he was still surprised when he rolled over in bed and she was sitting in the window frame of his bedroom in the tiny apartment he was subletting. “Jesus,” he said, clutching his chest, but she knew she hadn’t really scared him. 

“You don’t have to pretend, with me,” she said gently. 

He sat up. “I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised,” he said, “but I figured it’d take you a little longer than that, and maybe you’d send a message first or something.”

She gave him a taut little smile. “No,” she said, “none of that’s really my style.”

His hair was wildly disarranged from sleep, and he was cute as fuck, but with the gloss off her wild fantasy of running away from all of it, he was a lot less irresistible. “Guess not,” he said, looking down at where her hands were in her lap. Empty, of course. He collected himself. “Listen,” he said. “Natasha.”

“You don’t really have to say anything,” she said. “I am sorry for shoving you off a cliff. You opened yourself to me enough for me to understand that it would be a shitty thing to do, and I did it anyway because I had to. I guess those were the last illusions I really had about the lifestyle we lead.”

“Yeah,” he said, considering her. He looked so sweet and soft, and she knew he was just all sharp edges underneath, and it would have been really interesting. 

She shrugged. “Could’ve been fun,” she said. “But I don’t think it would’ve worked for more than a couple months at most before we got dragged back in.”

“A little bird told me you’ve already been hunted down by some ghosts from your long-ago past,” Bruce said.

“No need for a plural, there,” she said. Clint, you little shit. Well, he was tight with Bruce, she couldn’t blame him. “Just the one ghost, really.”

“He gonna be okay?” Bruce asked. “My source thought maybe you’d kill each other.” It wasn’t said kindly. 

“I guess there’s not much your source would know about it,” she said. Men always did this, always got jealous and wounded even if they didn’t want you. Even the good ones, they didn’t like you to have options. But Bruce was a good one, and she wearily conceded in her head that he meant well. “He’s fine. Well. He will be.” She made herself go further, chat as if she weren’t offended. “He’s stolen my cat’s affections, though. It’s a problem. My cat is completely taken with him.”

“Didn’t know you had a cat,” Bruce said. 

Natasha considered him, fidgeting with the cuff of her sleeve. “I do,” she said. “A stray. She adopted me.” She glanced down. “I’m not being-- metaphorical, or whatever. It’s just a cat. And she likes him. And it’s not true that animals are good judges of character, but it’s true that they’re very observant about people.” 

“So I’ve noticed,” Bruce said, and there was a long awkward pause. “Natasha,” he said finally. “I am sorry.” 

She gave him a grin that really wasn’t at all rueful. “I am, too,” she said, “but I’m sorry for things that can’t be helped, so it’s not all that bitter really. We’re not the people we sometimes wish we were, and honestly that’s just as well. I can do a lot of good as the person I am, so there’s not much point wishing to be someone else.” 

Bruce stared at her. “That’s a… surprisingly healthy way of looking at it,” he said. 

“I thought so,” she said. “It took a lot of work for me to get to a place where I could admit that I wished I was different, though. So I can’t regret the intervening stuff. It was what it was, Bruce. A nice story, and a healthy wish. But not possible. And that’s okay.”

“Is it?” he asked, and there was a crease between his brows. 

“It is,” she said. He was genuine, and he was done with his tiny moment of pettiness, and she did care for him a great deal after all. The last bit of her wounded pride let go, and she slid down off the window sill. “Here,” she said, pressing a little transmitter on a tiny keychain ring into his hand. She hadn’t planned to give it to him, but she couldn’t deny the impulse now. “If you need me, you activate that. There’s a little thing you gotta push with a paperclip or something.”

“Clint said he had your number,” Bruce said, but he was already threading the thing through a chain on his neck. 

“He doesn’t have this one,” she said. “It’s the priority line.” She smiled at him, and climbed back up into the window. 

Bruce stared at her. “Thanks,” he said, wary and hesitant. 

“Use it if you need me,” she said. “I mean it.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. 

“And if you feel like coming in, there’s room at the Avengers Academy for you.” She shrugged. “Nice, safe-- some good kids there, too, who’d be overawed to meet you.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Bruce said, and there was more to it than politeness. 

“See you around,” she said, and gave him one last smile as she tipped backward out the window to where her descent handholds started. 

 


	5. Entertain Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just fluff. Previously posted as a Tumblr ficlet during the challenge that Ora Pro Nobis was written for.

 

Natasha rolled over, finally giving up on her light doze after a series of thumps. She couldn’t identify them easily; they were not the normal noises Liho made playing on her own. 

It was five-thirty in the morning. She yanked her bathrobe on, shoved her feet in her slippers, and shuffled blearily out into the kitchen.

Having a roommate was proving a difficult adjustment. 

It took James probably a full thirty seconds to look up and see her standing in the doorway. He was crouched on one of the kitchen chairs, facing backward, dangling a broken shoelace tied to a-- a sock? One of her socks, balled-up. James only wore wool socks. Sometimes it was clear that he was a very old man.

“Finally awake,” he said, taking in her appearance. He twitched the shoelace and Liho scrabbled madly for it, making another thump.

“It’s five fucking thirty in the morning,” she said. 

He blinked at her. “Well,” he said, “it’s after ten, Greenwich time.”

“We are not in Greenwich,” she said. She shuffled the rest of the way into the room and sat at the kitchen table. “It’s a Saturday. We don’t have any obligations today.”

“This one disagrees,” James said, yanking on the shoelace so Liho had to leap for it. She missed, and crashed into the cabinet, scrambled madly around the corner, and crouched there, butt wiggling in the air, as James let the sock on a string lie nearly-still on the floor, twitching it slightly with the tiniest, micro-controlled flickers of his metal hand. 

“This one is a cat, she can entertain herself,” Natasha said. “Come back to bed, James, the crashing and thumping is obnoxious.”

“You have gone soft,” James intoned in exaggeratedly-guttural Russian. 

Natasha shoved to her feet and untied her bathrobe. “Suit yourself,” she said, pulling the bathrobe off and dropping it over the back of the chair. She followed it with her sleep shirt, and turned slowly, stretching nonchalantly, padding back toward the bedroom in just her lacy blue underpants. “I will be soft and weak and naked in my bed, you can entertain yourself with the cat if you like.”

She didn’t need to turn her head to see the way James looked at her. He cleared his throat. 

“Uh,” he said, “Liho, I think you can entertain yourself.”

By the time she got back to the bedroom, he was right behind her. 

“I knew you’d see my way,” she said. If she was going to be awake this early on a weekend, she might as well enjoy herself. 


End file.
